7: Imperialism Flashcards
J.A. Hobson
John Atkinson Hobson was an English economist and social scientist. Hobson is best known for his writing on imperialism, which influenced Vladimir Lenin and his theory of underconsumption. After covering the Second Boer War as a correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, he condemned British involvement in the war and characterised it as acting under the influence of mine owners. In a series of books, he explored the associations between imperialism and international conflict and asserted that imperial expansion is driven by a search for new markets and investment opportunities overseas. In “The Industrial System” (1909), Hobson argued that maldistribution through oversaving and underconsumption led to unemployment. In his view, the best remedy for this was eradicating the “surplus” by redistribution of income by taxation and the nationalization of monopolies. Vladimir Lenin drew much from “Imperialism: A Study” to support and substantiate “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, which then was a contemporary war-time analysis of the geopolitical crises of the imperial empires of Europe that culminated in the First World War.
Cecil John Rhodes
Cecil Rhodes was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa. An ardent believer in British imperialism, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), which the company named after him in 1895. He also served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. During this time, Rhodes used his political power to expropriate land from black Africans through the Glen Grey Act, while also tripling the wealth requirement for voting under the Franchise and Ballot Act, effectively barring black people from taking part in elections. Widely acknowledged also as a white supremacist, Rhodes explicitly believed in the superiority of white English people over all others, especially sub-Saharan Africans. He famously said, “to be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life”. During his political career he successfully confiscated land from the indigenous population of the Cape Colony, arguably setting the course for apartheid in the next century, and falsely claimed southern African archaeological sites such as Great Zimbabwe were built by European civilisations instead. After overseeing the formation of Rhodesia during the early 1890s, he was forced to resign in 1896 after the disastrous Jameson Raid, an unauthorised attack on Paul Kruger’s South African Republic (or Transvaal). Rhodes’s career never recovered; his heart was weak and after years of poor health he died in 1902.
Jameson Raid
The Jameson Raid (29 December 1895 – 2 January 1896) was a botched raid against the South African Republic (commonly known as the Transvaal) carried out by British colonial administrator Leander Starr Jameson, under the employment of Cecil Rhodes. It involved 500 British South Africa Company police launched from Rhodesia (region) on 29 December 1895. Paul Kruger, whom Rhodes had a great personal hatred towards, was president of the South African Republic at the time. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (known as Uitlanders) in the Transvaal but failed to do so. They were expected to recruit an army and prepare for an insurrection; however, the raid was ineffective, and no uprising took place. The results included embarrassment of the British government; the replacement of Cecil Rhodes as prime minister of the Cape Colony; and the strengthening of Boer dominance of the Transvaal and its gold mines. The raid was a contributory cause of the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
General Charles Gordon
Major-General Charles George Gordon was a British Army officer and administrator. He saw action in the Crimean War as an officer in the British Army but made his military reputation in China, where he was placed in command of the “Ever Victorious Army”, a force of Chinese soldiers led by European officers which was instrumental in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, regularly defeating much larger forces. For these accomplishments, he was given the nickname “Chinese Gordon” and honours from both the Emperor of China and the British. Later, he entered the service of the Khedive of Egypt in 1873 and became the Governor-General of the Sudan for some time, where he did much to suppress revolts and the local slave trade. When a serious revolt broke out in the Sudan, led by a Muslim religious leader and self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, Gordon was sent to Khartoum with instructions to secure the evacuation of loyal soldiers and civilians and to depart with them. In defiance of those instructions, after evacuating about 2,500 civilians he retained a smaller group of soldiers and non-military men. Besieged by the Mahdi’s forces, Gordon organised a citywide defence that lasted for almost a year and gained him the admiration of the British public, but not of the government. Only when public pressure to act had become irresistible did the government send a relief force. It arrived two days after the city had fallen and Gordon had been killed.
Berlin Conference 1885
The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, also known as the Congo Conference regulated the European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period and coincided with Germany’s sudden emergence as an imperial power. The conference was organized by Otto von Bismarck. There were considerable political rivalries among the European empires in the last quarter of the 19th century. Africa was partitioned without wars between European nations. Its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the beginning and the formalisation of the Scramble for Africa, the invasion, annexation, division, and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European. The conference contributed to ushering in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, which eliminated or overrode most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance. The 10 percent of Africa that was under formal European control in 1870 increased to almost 90 percent by 1914, with only Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and Liberia remaining independent, though Ethiopia would later be invaded and occupied by Italy in 1936.
Battle of Adowa
The Battle of Adowa was the First Italo-Ethiopian War was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from 1895 to 1896. It originated from the disputed Treaty of Wuchale, which the Italians claimed turned Ethiopia into an Italian protectorate. Full-scale war broke out in 1895, with Italian troops from Italian Eritrea having initial success until Ethiopian troops counterattacked Italian positions and besieged the Italian fort of Mekele, forcing its surrender. Italian defeat came about after the Battle of Adwa. On 1 March 1896, where the Ethiopian army dealt the heavily outnumbered Italian soldiers a decisive blow and forced their retreat back into Eritrea. The war concluded with the Treaty of Addis Ababa. Because this was one of the first decisive victories by African forces over a European colonial power, this war became a preeminent symbol of pan-Africanism and secured Ethiopia’s sovereignty until 1937.
Menelik II
Menelik was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1889 to his death in 1913 and King of Shewa from 1866 to 1889. At the height of his internal power and external prestige, the process of territorial expansion and creation of the modern empire-state was completed by 1898. The Ethiopian Empire was transformed under Emperor Menelik: the major signposts of modernisation were put in place, with the assistance of key ministerial advisors. Externally, Menelik led Ethiopian troops against Italian invaders in the First Italo-Ethiopian War; following a decisive victory at the Battle of Adwa, recognition of Ethiopia’s independence by external powers was expressed in terms of diplomatic representation at his court and delineation of Ethiopia’s boundaries with the adjacent colonies. Menelik expanded his realm to the south and east.
Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895. The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing dynasty’s attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan’s successful Meiji Restoration. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan. The prestige of the Qing dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China, suffered a major blow. The humiliating loss of Korea as a tributary state sparked an unprecedented public outcry and China’s defeat was a catalyst for a series of political upheavals within China led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei, culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.
Tsushima
The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The Battle of Tsushima was a major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan on 27–28 May 1905 in the Tsushima Strait located between Korea and southern Japan. In this battle the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian fleet, under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had travelled over 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to reach the Far East. It was naval history’s first decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets and the first naval battle in which wireless telegraphy (radio) played a critically important role. It has been characterized as the “dying echo of the old era of naval warfare”.
Alfred Mahan
Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States naval officer and historian. Mahan’s views were shaped by 17th-century conflicts between the Dutch Republic, England, France and Spain, and by the nineteenth-century naval wars between France and Great Britain. British naval superiority eventually defeated France, consistently preventing invasion and an effective blockade. Mahan emphasized that naval operations were chiefly to be won by decisive battles and blockades. Mahan believed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea, with its commercial use in peace and its control in war. He argued that the primary mission of a navy was to secure the command of the sea, which would permit the maintenance of sea communications for one’s own ships while denying their use to the enemy. Control of the sea could be achieved not by destruction of commerce but only by destroying or neutralizing the enemy fleet. Such a strategy called for the concentration of naval forces composed of capital ships, numerous, well-manned with crews thoroughly trained, and operating under the principle that the best defence is an aggressive offense. Mahan contended that with a command of the sea, even if local and temporary, naval operations in support of land forces could be of decisive importance.
Theophile Delcassé
Theophile Delcassé was a French statesman who gave new impetus to French colonial enterprise, especially in West Africa, where he organized the newly acquired colony of Dahomey, and despatched the Liotard mission to the upper Ubangi. While in opposition, he devoted special attention to naval affairs, and in noted speeches he declared that the function of the French navy was to secure and develop colonial enterprise, deprecated all attempts to rival the British fleet, and advocated the construction of commerce destroyers as France’s best reply to England. In 1898 he had to deal with the delicate situation caused by Captain Marchand’s occupation of the town of Fashoda in the Sudan for which he accepted full responsibility, since it arose directly out of the Liotard expedition. In March 1899 he concluded an agreement with Britain by which the difficulty was finally adjusted, and France consolidated her vast colonial empire in North-West Africa. In the same year he acted as mediator between the US and Spain and brought the peace negotiations to a successful conclusion. He was expansionist and very anti-German. He improved relations between France and Italy and adhered firmly to the alliance with Russia. In 1900 he arranged with Spain, fixing the long-disputed boundaries of the French and Spanish possessions in West Africa.
Rudyard Kipling
Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. When New Imperialism gave rise to new social views of colonialism, Kipling urged the United States to “Take up the White Man’s burden” of bringing European civilization to the other peoples of the world, regardless of whether these “other peoples” wanted this civilization or not. Kipling’s poems and stories were extraordinarily popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, but after World War I his reputation as a serious writer suffered through his being widely viewed as a jingoistic imperialist.
The Spanish American War
The Spanish–American War (April-August 1898) was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States. The main issue was Cuban independence. Revolts had been occurring for some years in Cuba against Spanish colonial rule. The U.S. backed these revolts upon entering the Spanish American War. After the United States Navy armored cruiser Maine mysteriously exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, US president McKinley signed a joint Congressional resolution demanding Spanish withdrawal and authorizing the President to use military force to help Cuba gain independence. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U.S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Both sides declared war; neither had allies. The 10-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. U.S. naval power would prove decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison already facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further devastated by yellow fever. Madrid sued for peace after two Spanish squadrons were sunk in the battles of Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay, and a third, more modern fleet was recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts. The war ended with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U.S. It ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands from Spain to the U.S. and granted the U.S. temporary control of Cuba. The defeat and loss of the Spanish Empire’s last remnants was a profound shock to Spain’s national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic re-evaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of ‘98. The United States meanwhile not only became a major power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.
Boxer Rebellion
Boxer Uprising was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Militia United in Righteousness. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 villagers in North China feared the expansion of foreign spheres of influence and resented the extension of privileges to Christian missionaries, who used them to shield their followers. Beginning in 1899, Boxers spread violence across Shandong and the North China Plain, destroying foreign property, such as railroads, and attacking or murdering Christian missionaries. In spring 1900, the Boxer movement spread rapidly into the countryside near Beijing. On June 20, 1900, the Boxers began a siege of Beijing’s foreign legation district (where the official quarters of foreign diplomats were located.) The following day, Qing Empress Dowager Tzu’u Hzi (Cixi) declared a war on all foreign nations with diplomatic ties in China. An international force of some 19,000 troops was assembled, most of the soldiers coming from Japan and Russia but many also from Britain, the United States, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. On August 14, 1900, that force finally captured Beijing, relieving the foreigners and Christians besieged there since June 20. After extensive discussions, a protocol was finally signed in September 1901, ending the hostilities and providing for reparations to be made to the foreign powers.
